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"Secretum Labyrinth : The Legend" Is now available on cartridge. The Game requires an Atari XL/XE computer with 64K RAM, a joystick and some keyboard usage to select and use items in your inventory. This is a Role Playing Adventure Game that fills in a gap for the Atari 8-bit in that there had been many Arcade Action Role Playing Adventure type games. We put a lot of hard work into this game, months of extensive beta testing.

The cartridge is available for $39.95, and comes with an instruction manual.

"Secretum Labyrinth The Legend" (cartridge) and "Secretum Labyrinth Kings Gold" makes use of Super IRG, and Multicolor mode on player/missile graphics that provides many colors on screen at once. Some of the rooms vary the color palettes slightly. I hope to keep things positive on this thread. This is my first attempt to make extensive use of this mode that alternates between two fonts, checkerboard and bar dithering techniques.

There are differences between "Kings Gold" and "The Legend" both with the game and with the programming. In "Kings Gold," you can only advance to skill level 7, and cannot go beyond 99 hitpoints. Has a limit of 95 rooms. There is also a different weapon. You only need to collect 6 treasures to solve, 3 gold coins, and 3 gold stars. This is designed to fit inside the 64K RAM on a stock Atari without any extended memory.

"The Legend" you can advance as far as level 21 and have up to 254 hitpoints. Has 256 rooms map, and weapons are available. You need to collect 16 treasures, each with a different image. You need to do certain tasks to get beyond some points in the game.

A sequel game is in the planning stage right now and I am asking what would people like to see. More rooms, monsters, weapons, and perform different tasks to get beyond a certain point in the game. Going with many more rooms makes it harder to debug, so I am setting up a more idiot proof system for the room set up.

Might add an armor system, upgrading armor. Collecting money and going to places to buy things. More items that you need to get beyond points inside the game. It will be much more involved game. I am working on ways to save your progress. Anybody interested in seeing it complete.

Very nice project, as mentioned it does fill in a void in the Atari library. I am surprised by how fast it moves though - I'm used to seeing these style of games on hardware of the era move along at a snails pace

I imagine this probably isn't in the cards (mainly due to the lack of a keyboard) but has there been any consideration for porting this to other systems like the 7800?

I had considered an Atari 7800 port, Jaguar Port, as well as porting to other platforms. I need to figure out a good way to set up a character mode screen on the 7800 to start with and work up from there,

I am working on a port over to the 5200 and trying to work with its 32K ROM + 16K RAM limitations. Trying to get this Deflate + Inflate routines to help compress things to within the memory we need. I will also be reusing the techniques used to make it fit into a smaller memory space to help the next big Atari 8-bit game (Secretum Labyrinth III) game do more. It may use a 64K Williams Cartridge or a 128K AtariMax Cartridge.

I am working on a port over to the 5200 and trying to work with its 32K ROM + 16K RAM limitations. Trying to get this Deflate + Inflate routines to help compress things to within the memory we need. I will also be reusing the techniques used to make it fit into a smaller memory space to help the next big Atari 8-bit game (Secretum Labyrinth III) game do more. It may use a 64K Williams Cartridge or a 128K AtariMax Cartridge.

we should be able to put it on a stock 128k atari xe e-prom super cart.

I finally decided to go public with this alternate technique for drawing the "Floor" inside the rooms for the next Secretum Labyrinth games. I am using an altered version of "Secretum Labyrinth Kings Gold" which is smaller adventure game that fits inside 64K and used for a demonstration for this game series. This new technique will be used for the Atari 5200 cartridge and the next cartridge game for the 8-bit. It is intended to improve the appearance of the game on PAL/SECAM displays, or simulated HDTV displays running at 50hz. Some people reported that background (non-moving) graphics flickering was noticeable. The new pixel pattern is visible in many rooms. It alternates between two characters that just has 1 pixel lit up, so there will be the same number of pixels being changed between each from. Different spacing and color patterns are done in different rooms. Moving objects (sprites) may still flicker if move than 2 objects share the same vertical position as this is due to the limitation of the Atari 8-bit computer only having 4 players that are overlapped to make 2 multicolored players.

I am offering this update of "Secretum Labyrinth Kings Gold" freely to the community members in exchange for their support they have shown for my games and for their assistance for helping me improve my games. So please try this game out.

This Adventure / Role Playing Game engine is something I intended to be an ongoing process and I stay open about what I am doing so I can get some feed back. Always looking for ideals of what to put inside these games. I am working on more stuff to do to get past certain points in the game, like answering riddles, exchanging items, or performing specific actions. There are many different computer based role playing games across many different platforms, but very few had been bought to the Atari 8-bit. I am aware of the Ultima series, Alternate Reality, Dungeon Hunt, and many others. Everybody has a different approach. I am also looking forward to Adventure II on the 8-bit.

The 5200 Cartridge will be a little more involved, I am adding more character attributes and more traps inside the rooms. I will also be looking to have more going on with the next cartridge game for the 8-bit. I am not going to go with the Advance Dungeon & Dragons character attribute system, like having Charisma, Constitution, Wisdom, etc. or make it into a turned based game. I like to keep the action going and fight the enemies with the joystick, more people think that is more fun. I am looking over many ideals for the next 8-bit cartridge to add more depth and make the adventure games more intense.

Attached Files

I decided to make up a new video in HD video of "Secretum Labyrinth The Legend" using same techniques I used for HeliCommander and Putt 18 that end up looking really good on YouTube. I really want to make this into my flagship game series and have something similar "Legend of Zelda" here on the Atari 8-bit for everyone to enjoy. This is a 15 minute long play showing a possible way to get extra experience points and to a higher skill level faster. I am glad that I kept things positive between myself and the AtariAge and Atari.IO communities. I believe by providing the first game in the series "Secretum Labyrinth Kings Gold" as a beta/demo provided something for people to try and let people decide if they would like to show some support with the purchase the cartridge. I have been working on some programming that could potentially go into the next Secretum Labyrinth game. Optimizations, getting the routines to do more different functions and be not take up much more room. I have been going over my list of things I like to try make possible in the next game. Larger maps and more monsters, to start with. See what I can do to make the graphics better with using Super IRG and Multiplexing the sprites. Of course I cannot disclose all my ideals with you all right now. You know I did throwing the hammer at a wall to open a secret exit, but need to come up with something with "detect hidden" to let the player know there is something hidden in the room. Maybe have to get a device first.

Secretum Labyrinth King's Gold is a freeware game that is part of the game series. The rest of the games are sold on cartridge. In a way it is demoware or betaware. I use it test out new updates let people look at them to see how some things behave on their hardware. Get some feedback on how I may improve the game. I know "King's Gold" does not do as much as the cartridge games since they use large bank switching cartridges.

In this update:

The option to turn background off, totally makes the background black once again. After doing the update that draws the pattern with the pixels further spaced apart, the routine did not check if the player wanted the backgrounds off. Once the backgrounds are black, the only way to bring them back is to reboot dos and load the game again.

Pressing Start no longer sends you back to the Title Splash Screen, pressing Select or Option does this.

That glitch when you die and go to that screen stating Start to Continue, Select to End. The Purple Background should remain there now.